August 2005

~YVES TANGUY & KAY SAGE at KATONAH

or: THE ART WORLD AIN’T WRITTEN in STONE – TAKE TWO !!

and thank the lordy that the art world is – always self-correcting.

case in point: the new-found respect for the work of YVES TANGUY and KAY SAGE – which has been overlooked, but with a fresh curatorial insight, most likely influenced by all the recent street and comic world imagery, not to mention cutting edge web graphics – has found a new relevance . . .

though the NEW YORK TIMES pretty much sucks in its contemporary art reviews, particularly regarding emerging artists (sic) – it does mid-career stuff ok – it’s historical and institutional reach is its best offering. witness KAREN ROSENBERG’S recent super super great article on the new exhibit in nearby KATONAH: ‘Double Solitaire: The Surreal Worlds of Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy’ – at the KATONAH MUSEUM of ART, running thru SEPT 18, 2011.

YVES TANGUY: ‘Multiplication of the Arcs’, 1954 – (!!)
PHOTO: MUSEUM OF MODERN ART/LICENSED BY SCALA, ART RESOURCE. PHOTOGRAPH ESTATE OF YVES TANGUY/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK/COURTESY THE NEW YORK TIMES

the images speak for themselves and the re-surgent interest, not to mention newly-found critical respect for the work.

while in the KAREN ROSENBERG article – some interesting historical facts are hi-lighted . . .

for starters, their only joint show until now. more than 50 years later – was back in 1954 when the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford Connecticut, and the oldest public art museum in the United States, bye the way – mounted a survey of Sage’s and Tanguy’s works.

ROSENBERG goes on to state:
“Although SAGE and TANGUY lived in America in the 1940s and ’50s, they were out of sync with American painting of the time. Unlike their fellow Surrealists and Connecticut neighbors MATTA and GORKY, they did not make the leap to Abstract Expressionism. As late as the early 1950s, with POLLOCK and de KOONING ascendant , they were still fixated on de CHIRICO.”

and again: thank the Lordy for revisionism !!

The KATONAH show is co-organized by JONATHAN STUHLMAN, a curator at the MINT MUSEUM of ART in Charlotte, North Carolina, who is writing a dissertation on Tanguy, and independent curator STEPHEN ROBESON, who is writing a book on Kay Sage.

go to ROSENBERG’S article, (link above) for more critical description & biographical details, but interestingly Yves Tanguy (1900-1950) came from the Brittany coast, “home to prehistoric rock formations” . . . and he “attended school with PIERRE MATISSE, the painter’s son, but his real entree into the art world came later, after World War I, when he met ANDRE BRETON in Paris.”

Kay Sage (1898-1963) “came from a wealthy upstate New York family, but had a European upbringing, travelling the continent with her divorced mother. She came to surrealism in the mid-1930s after a decade-long marriage to an Italian that had frustrated her artistic ambitions.”

WOW – THIS IS BEGINNING TO SOUND – LIKE THE GREAT BEGINNING TO – A NEW – WOODY ALLEN FLICK !!

ROSENBERG continues:

“She was taken with Tanguy’s work from the moment she saw it, at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London; the painting that most captivated her, she later recalled was proleptically titled ‘I Am Waiting for You.’

Two years later, at a Paris salon, Tanguy saw Sage’s work and was just as impressed . . . a mutual friend finessed an introduction,adn the toe became an item.”

WOW – SHADES OF JOHN, YOU KNOW WHO !! – AND – YOKO !! . . . OR WHAT !!

re: ARS that’s as in …. so don’t be appropriating, dude !! hands off the image.

ROSENBERG does refer to the presentient aspects of the work.
“. . their visions became more distinct but share an element of science fiction. Sage builds shadowy skyscrapers that look like something out of ‘Blade Runner’, while Tanguy amasses fields of post-apocalyptic rubble.” (!!)